The 78th Primetime Emmy Awards had a distinct bicoastal approach tonight, and let’s be honest, something truly got very lost along the way, to put it politely. Sorry, Stephen Colbert, but “if you like the comedy tonight, my old writers wrote it” may part of the Variety Series winning Late Show’s legacy we all want to forget fast after this year’s ceremony.
Though the Mariska Hargitay hosted ceremony was live from L.A., TV’s biggest night kicked off with a New York state of mind vibe. A vibe that was way more Billy Joel tribute band than Jay-Z, if you know what I mean?
Let’s make one thing very clear: Mariska Hargitay gave it all she could, but the script simply was a first draft mess in motion.
The first female Emmy host in a decade and a half started thigs with a pre-recorded show name dropping take on Joan Jett’s classic ‘I Love Rock’n’Roll’ that would have been pretty standard mid-ceremony fare were it not for the anticipated appearance of NBA champ and Knicks superstar Jalen Brunson, Still, even steaming haute couture for Hargitay, the desperately underused Captain Clutch couldn’t save things.
Unlike the last time NBC had the Emmys back in 2022, at least you could see it all going wrong early in the broadcast with the sad mime dancing dudes coming up next. Leaping around with cheap carboard TV screens on their heads, the gents surrounded Hargitay as she stepped on stage live at the Peacock Theatre. The late great Marcel Maréchal surely hung his silent had in shame for his profession — also, The Residents (IYKYK) should sue.
Giving us all a small respite, self-described “America’s sweetheart sex cop” Hargitay’s scripted retort to Nicole Kidman as she mocked the Lioness star’s easily mockable Covid era AMC Theatre ad may have had her best line of the night with “Zip it Movie Lady! It’s TV’s turn tonight!” Actually, it might have been the best line of the whole night aside from Remarkably Bright Creatures star Sally Field’s “Blessed Canada” lovefest in her Lead Actress in a Limited or Anthology Seres or Movie.
In that context, at almost three hours long, it was a good night for the iconic Fields. It was a good night for The Pitt and its star Noah Wyle. It was a good for the long overdue Rhea Seehorn and Pluribus’ debut season. It was a good night for Hacks’ Jean Smart with her eighth Emmy win. It was a good night for The Diplomat’s POTUS Allison Janney. It was very good night for double winner Matthew Rhys The Americans vet took home trophies for Apple TV’s Best Comedy winner Widow’s Bay and Netflix’s The Beast In Me.
It was not a good night for the Emmys, on multiple fronts.
The on-stage salutes to Dolly Parton, James Burrows, (very Canadian) Catherine O’Hara, and Rob Reiner were heartfelt and genuinely moving. However, in contrast, the hyped Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Charlie’s Angels reunions were non-events.
Near the beginning of tonight’s Emmys, Hargitay was rightly celebrating being the first women to host the ceremony since Jane Lynch in 2011. Puncturing her own posterity, Hargitay quipped “for 15 years, Amy and Tina said no.”
Note to the producers: You had some history in play tonight on multiple levels.
Hargitay has been playing Law and Order: SVU’s Oliva Benson since 1999. She has won two Emmys for that role. She won an Emmy last weekend for her moving My Mom Jayne documentary. As I said, taking on a hosting gig usually given to comedians, Hargitay put it all on the table, but she deserved much better than what she was given.
In a shift from tradition, the selection of the multiple Emmy winning Law & Order: SVU star to host the Monday night ceremony has all the air of a Hollywood throwback – at least one paper. Yes, Lynch hosted the Emmys in 2011, and Neil Patrick Harris was upfront in 2009, but both have extensive comedic chops. In the spirit of safety first, the last time a non-comedian fronted the Oscars was the 2011 fiasco of James Franco and Anne Hathaway.
To that, in what I first optimistically assumed was a punking prank, the whole shebang tonight went from bad to much worse with a Dick Wolf tribute from the L&O alum that became about a semi-plagiarized Richard Penis joke.
After Hargitay’s opener, Amy Poehler’s proclamation that she “nailed it” had to be at best a complement to the My Mother Jany director’s considerable acting skills to deliver such lousy lines from such a lousy script with a straight face. A straight face that seemed to almost break with the lousy First Jobs skit and Nick Offerman’s Erotic House Painter patter.
An hour into the show that seemed to hand out too few awards, another prerecorded skit with Hargitay going full free association Olivia Benson to probe if Taylor Swift would show up on the Emmys. By the time the superstar showed up in the precinct, the Emmys had hit new low in lame. Even the fourth wall breaking nod to Monday Night Football’s Kansas City Chiefs (home of Swift’s hubby Travis Kelce) thumping of the Denver Broncos became just another pivot to nothing.
Not to belabor the critique, but Hargitay’s admission that she’d been working with the ex-writing staff of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert reveals the scribes have gotten really rusty since CBS cut them loose in May – even with the love their old boss gave them onstage. A fact that was made even more evident by John Mulaney’s alternative universe opening monologue masquerading as the manosphere intro to The Pitt’s Wyle winning Best Actor in a Drama for the second year in a row.
Maybe Mulaney’s quips were penned by the same team that scripted Hargitay, but the difference was in more than just the delivery – and I ain’t talking about gender.
TV Academy voters snub his shows, but maybe it’s time for the organization to bring Taylor Sheridan into the fold, at least backstage. Maybe it’s time to give Mariska Hargitay some material plays to her immense strengths
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